1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a fluid ejecting apparatus.
2. Related Art
An ink jet printer (hereinafter referred to as a “printer”) is widely known as a fluid ejecting apparatus capable of ejecting ink droplets onto a printing sheet. A maintenance process is regularly conducted by a printing head of such a printer so as to maintain or recover a good ejection characteristic. As the maintenance process, for example, there is a process of carrying out a flushing operation by preliminarily ejecting ink from each nozzle of the printing head regularly to prevent the nozzles from being clogged due to increased viscosity of the ink or to adjust a meniscus of the nozzle, and to normally eject the ink from the printing head, as well as a printing operation.
In general, although a printing head is moved to an area other than a printing area to carry out the flushing operation in a scan type printer, the printer equipped with a line head with a fixed printing head is not able to move the printing head during flushing operation. Accordingly, for example, a method of ejecting the ink into an absorbing material, which is provided on a surface of a transporting belt for transporting the printing sheet, has been considered (refer to JP-A-2005-119284).
However, in the technology disclosed in JP-A-2005-119284, since a plurality of absorbing materials are placed at regular intervals on the transporting belt to coincide with the size of the printing sheet, during flushing the ink should be ejected while aiming for a gap between the printing sheets. Therefore, there is a problem that the size of the printing sheets or the transporting speed of the printing sheet is limited. In addition, if the flushing is carried out with respect to the planar absorbing material, misted ink is scattered by the wind pressure which is generated by the discharge of the ink droplets, so that the surface of the printing sheet or the transporting belt may become contaminated.
Accordingly, a method of receiving the ink onto the absorbing member is considered, in which a linear member is used as a absorbing material, the linear member is interposed between the line head and the printing sheet, and the linear member is moved to a position opposite to a nozzle row during flushing operation, so that the linear member receives the ink.
However, the linear member may vibrate upon movement, so that vibration has a negative influence upon the effective implementation of the flushing operation.